How two apps are turning smartphones into navigation devices for the blind

A team from the University of California , Santa Cruz , wants to use smartphone apps to help blind people navigate buildings.

The Wayfinding and Backtracking apps need only a phone’s internal sensors to offer guidance.

These apps are not reliant on any external infrastructure, nor do they require users to hold the phones in a certain position to capture data from their surroundings.

Wayfinding and Backtracking are “only experimental apps, still far from a distribution version” The apps rely on Apple ’s GameplayKit system, a framework predominantly used for building games.

The team also used smartwatch-based controls on an Apple Watch , using a mix of controls including touch-based swipe, Digital Crown movement, and VoiceOver .

The Wayfinding app is driven by the availability of floor plans.

The only path forward would be to digitally remap them professionally, which would be another massive undertaking. For now, open-sourcing seems to be the only meaningful path ahead, as that would at least ensure that Wayfinding and Backtracking apps can provide navigation assistance in any meaningful capacity. “There is no architectural provision for blind people. There are no enforceable guidelines,” Khan tells me. “These apps at least offer a viable route fix to walk past those mistakes.”The Latest Tech News , Delivered to Your Inbox.